The first Rustwight slammed down like a gods-damned church bell.

Maeve flinched as the impact rattled the entire chamber. One of the bridges shuddered like it had been struck by a falling star. She barely had time to glance up before even more Rustwights came crashing down, one after another, each slamming from the ceiling in a storm of iron and sludge.

Twelve in total. Maybe more. Giant shapes hit the bridges like boulders, but when they stood, they stood with limbs, armor, and faceless heads.

Screams immediately echoed somewhere far down the scaffolds. Then another. Then dozens. The Repossessors didn't wait, after all. The moment the first Rustwight raised its arm, they charged with loud, morphing weapons and ugly confidence. Metal sang and growled as chains burst into buzzsaws, blades into claws, pistons into spears, but Maeve knew they were wasting their strength.

Nothing they threw made a scratch. The Rustwights didn't flinch. Their arms moved like tidal waves, sweeping whole squads of Repossessors off the bridges with single, squelching blows. One tried to leap onto a Rustwight's back, and the thing reached behind it and crushed him with one hand like a bird caught mid-flight.

Chaos bloomed. Shouts cracked. Screams scattered, and blood hit the floor.

Inside the central control chamber, however, Lorcawn remained unmoved. He simply turned towards Gael, voice steady and uncaring.

"Doctor. Open the pipes. Let us worry about the monstrosities."

But Maeve's gaze snapped sideways just in time to see one of the falling Rustwights barrel into the scaffolding right outside the gate.

Steel groaned. Rivets shrieked. The bridge directly outside where Cara stood—alongside Evelyn and Liorin stood—shuddered once, then split down the center with a deafening crack. The whole segment tilted sharply toward the abyss, its supports tearing loose from the wall like wet paper.

Cara didn't scream. She didn't panic. She only looked forward—eyes wide, alarmed—and in that single, frozen instant, she moved.

Both hands snapped out, and she shoved Evelyn and Liorin forward into the chamber door.

The children tumbled in, limbs flailing. Maeve caught only a glimpse of their masked faces before the bridge they were on gave out entirely.

Cara didn't jump in after them.

She didn't have time.

The bridge collapsed under her boots, and she fell with it, screaming with her coat whipping upwards like wings too late to fly.

No!

Maeve and Gael immediately tried to move, but Fergal was faster than both of them

His silhouette flashed forward, hand out, expression carved in stone, but though he dove without hesitation—he missed her hand.

Just barely.

His fingers sliced through empty air where hers had just been.

Cara's scream rang once more across the vast, chaotic chamber as she fell.

Both Maeve and Gael dropped to their knees at the gate's edge, fingers gripping the metal as if they could tear the fall back into existence. Gael, in particular, tilted his mask down into the dark. He didn't speak. He didn't scream. He just stared—wide-eyed, silent, and cracked open at the seams—as Cara vanished into the abyss.

Maeve knelt beside him, her breath caught in her throat.

Then something stabbed behind her eyes.

Sharp. Splitting. Sudden.

Her balance faltered. The air turned syrupy. The lantern light around her bled sideways, and though the chamber stayed the same, her vision blurred like glass fogged from the inside.

Her throat felt cold. Her fingers prickled.

And her eyes began to dissolve as a glimpse into the past took her, for the first time, in the middle of the day.

The carriage rattled like a dying lungfish as it rolled to a halt on the cobbled street.

Gael didn't move.

Ten years old, small for his age, legs folded tight and arms clutching a cracked medical textbook to his chest—he simply stared through the rain-slick window at the mansion-clinic before him. It was a clean, orderly place made of lacquered whitewood and pale stone, with copper fixtures that gleamed even in the mist. Too symmetrical. Too bright. It made his skin itch.

He supposed it was just right for a clinic in the City of Splendors.

His new father—a 'Doctor' Halloway—stepped out of the carriage first, and then he helped Cara down second.

Gael stepped out on his own.

The City of Splendors may stink of perfume and cold metal, but this building? This smelled like antiseptic and glass and money. He hated it already.

"Come, Gael," said the Doctor. "I'll show you the facilities."

He followed in silence.

The front hall alone was larger than the entire orphan ward in the Sallow Hearth. Tall ceilings, lanterns that glowed with cold alchemical light, and floor tiles you could see your face in. Not that he wanted to. His bandages were fresh today—wound tight across his jaw and cheek—but he didn't want to see what lay beneath.

They passed white-smocked staff bowing politely. They passed shelves full of gleaming instruments. Glass walls. Fragranceless flowers. A room full of mechanical arms meant for surgeries. Another room full of noise-cancelling gauze chambers meant for burn treatments. Another, another, another. Everything gleamed like they'd never been used.

"And this," said the Doctor, stopping before a pale wooden door with golden filigree, "is your new room."

Gael opened it.

White bedding. Folded clothes. A desk. A small shelf with real books. A drawer. No bars on the window.

Gael hated it, too.

"... I get this all to myself?"

The Doctor nodded.

Gael only said, "Huh."

But something inside him, quiet and mean and cracked, felt a bit less cold.

They continued the tour.

The rest of the clinic-mansion was impressive as expected, but he noticed something in a hallway near the servant stairs, hanging crooked on a hook near the third-floor medicine racks.

A black mask shaped like a raven's beak.

"..."

He didn't stop walking, though he did glance at it a little longer.

The first few weeks in his new home, he ate alone.

That wasn't new.

Every morning, the rotating clinic staff left food on a tray outside his room. He waited until no one was around to take it. He read constantly: textbooks, medical catalogs, dissection diagrams, formula sheets. Most of them stolen from the Doctor's study, of course, though no one ever stopped him. At least the part of the clinic where he lived was quiet, clean, and private. He hated it a little less each day.

The Daughter always tried to talk to him.

She'd knock gently on his door. Ask if he wanted to walk the garden. Ask what he was reading. Ask if his eyes hurt.

He always ignored her. Pity was just a long way of saying 'you'll disappoint me eventually'. She'd give up on trying to like him eventually.

He'd learned that young.

One night, the knock came from someone else.

"We're eating dinner together," the Doctor said through the door. "Come on downstairs."

It sounded like an order he couldn't refuse. Reluctantly, Gael tightened the bandages around his face before opening the door.

The dining room below the main clinic ward was bright and full of polished brass. Gael sat stiff as a corpse at one end of the table. The Daughter sat across. The Doctor sat at the head. The food was fragrant: chicken braised in wine, crisped vegetables, thin soup with medicinal roots. Too soft. Too good. He didn't trust it.

They ate in silence until the Doctor eventually asked, "Do you like it here?"

Gael didn't look up. "It's fine."

He kept stealing glances at the raven mask on the far wall. Its beak pointed down like it was listening.

"... Interested in the mask?" the Doctor asked.

"No."

And the moment he finished eating, Gael stood to retreat to his room.

"Wait," the Doctor said. "Come with me. Both of you."

Cara rose immediately. Gael hesitated.

He still followed, not because he wanted to, but because he felt something bad would happen if he refused.

The three of them walked to the hallway with the raven mask. The Doctor twisted it from the wall with a quiet click.

A section of the wall groaned open.

A secret door.

The scent that spilled out was thick and cold. Copper, alcohol, and something else. Gael followed the two of them down a set of spiralling stairs into a hidden lab beneath the clinic, and the temperature dropped immediately.

The ceiling glowed with dim tubing. The walls pulsed with amber liquid. Rows of vats lined the shelves, filled with suspended chimeras, preserved limbs, and opened hearts. Other things he couldn't name yet.

Large machines hummed quietly. Gears clicked. Levers ticked back and forth in measured rhythm. And in the middle, a broad, metal workbench with a single glass flask bubbled on a burner.

Gael paused.

Of all things in the lab, that little flask was what caught his eye the most.

"This," said the Doctor walking towards the bench, "is my real work."

He picked up the flask carefully. The liquid inside shimmered with six or seven colors all swirling in conflict, and steam rose gently from the rim.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"You've heard of Myrmurs, yes?" he said, squinting at the liquid. "They are monsters without purpose. Without origin. Without logic. They simply appear everywhere, anytime, and in anyone they want. And no one's ever stopped them from doing so."

He turned to face Gael.

"There are plenty of organizations that fight them when they appear, yes, but none of them try to stop them from appearing in the first place."

Gael looked up at him, eyes stern.

The Doctor held the flask higher, smiling faintly behind his thick glasses.

"This," said the Doctor, "is what I'm tentatively calling the 'symbiote elixir'. Simply put, it's a prototype elixir designed to prevent Myrmurs from ever appearing. Imagine that. An elixir that kills before the killer."

Gael imagined something, alright. He imagined all the old doctors at the Sallow Hearth sneering. "Nobody believes you, do they?"

The Doctor gave a low chuckle, amused rather than offended. "Not the Church's Ecclesiarchate, no. Not the Clinic Authority. Not the Maesters up in their ivory towers. They all say it can't be done. The parasitization is too spontaneous, they claim. Too arcane. But I…" He glanced down at the raven mask still in his hands. "I am a 'Doctor'. I am a worker of miracles."

Gael watched the way the Doctor's fingers curled around the beak, firm but reverent. Like it was some sort of relic.

"I've read your files," the Doctor said suddenly, lowering his flask, turning to Gael, and kneeling in front of him. "You're a smart kid. I know about your brain. Your resistance and immunity to toxins. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in using you for experimentation, because you might just be the key to finishing my elixir."

"Of course you are."

"But," the Doctor added quickly, "I also want to give you a home. A real one. You can join my research if you want to. If you don't, I won't force you. You can simply live here and work in the brighter clinic."

However, Gael's eyes were still locked on the iridescent elixir in the Doctor's hand.

In response, he only asked, "How does it work?"

"It's complicated."

"Try me."

"You're smart, but that is taken for granted among our flock. You're not quite brilliant just yet."

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah." A pause. Then the Doctor smiled. "You want to learn how this elixir works? You'll have to be a Raven. You'll have to put on this mask."

Gael frowned. "Why?"

The Doctor held it up. "A Raven's mask represents many things: hope, cruelty, despair, beauty, and all things that are despised under the realm of the Saintess. When you put on a Raven's mask, it will give you power like nothing else in the world, just like it gave me when I was still a young man… but I am far, far too old, and it was given to me when I was a boy. It no longer fits my face." Then he tilted his head and added, "But I think it'll fit your face just fine. Try it on without your bandages.

Gael hesitated. His fingers curled. He didn't like being looked at. Especially not with the bandages off. But slowly, he turned his back to the room, fingers moving to undo the wraps at his eyes.

The gauze came off like peeling skin.

He dropped them to the floor, piece by piece. Then he reached around blindly and snatched the raven mask off the Doctor's hand. It was heavier than he expected. Cold, too. When he slipped it over his entire face, he immediately stopped breathing.

It was too tight.

So, he split the mask down the center—which was simple enough, given it was designed to be able to do so—and refit just the upper half of it over his eyes, leaving his mouth free.

When he exhaled again, it felt like fog. Fresh and cool and somehow comforting. His acid scars always stung a little less whenever he hid his eyes behind his bandages, but there was something oddly medicinal about this mask in particular. Maybe there were herbs stuffed inside the beak?

Regardless, the mask did feel comfortable.

More comfortable than his old bandages, at least.

"... Do you want to be a doctor and help people with me, Gael?"

Gael didn't answer the Doctor first. The question sounded like bait, so he waited for the second shoe to drop.

He waited.

He waited a bit longer.

After a while, he murmured, "Can I?"

The Doctor tilted his head. "Why do you think you can't?"

"Because I'm not supposed to be alive."

He could feel the Daughter's eyes on him, but he didn't care. Not right now.

"My mother died giving birth to me," he said quietly. "That's what the matron always said. Father never said it himself, but… I'm not blind. I'm not dumb. He blamed me for her death, the way he always walked past me. The way he… never called my name."

He swallowed thickly.

"I killed her, didn't I? My life for hers. One for one. Can someone who trades one life for another ever become a doctor?"

His voice cracked a little at the end, so he stopped talking. Silence pressed in. The Daughter immediately shifted like she wanted to speak, but the Doctor raised one hand, cutting her off gently.

"Do you know about the Bloodless Mandate, Gael?"

"Yeah?"

"Then take it. Swear it. That's all it takes. If you vow to never take a life again, then you can be a doctor and help people."

Gael scoffed. "Words don't erase blood already spilled."

"They can if you mean them. You wear the mask that works miracles, no?"

The Doctor's voice wasn't mocking. That annoyed Gael even more.

"I used to kill people," the Doctor continued, "and I mean a lot of people. For the longest time, they called me the 'Hypertonic Doctor', but ever since I swore the Bloodless Mandate and hung up the mask, I haven't killed a single soul. See? The mandate works."

Gael stared at him like he'd just claimed he could float.

"You're lying."

The Doctor smiled faintly. "Want to try it yourself?"

"What, now?"

"Now."

The Doctor began chanting. The words were slow, solemn, archaic—a dead tongue resurrected for peace—and Gael rolled his eyes, but he recited them by mumbling under his breath anyways, more out of spite than belief.

Each word felt ridiculous, but he was halfway through when he realized he was actually finishing it.

When the last syllable left his mouth, he stood there in silence.

"... That was just the practice run, right?"

"No. You've already done it," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Just like magic. You're bound to the mandate now. You will never be able to kill again."

Gael scoffed again. "Idiotic. It's just a few words."

"But it certainly works."

"How do you know?"

The Doctor's hand flashed.

Steel glinted.

Gael ducked instinctively as the man lunged at him with a scalpel, aiming directly for his throat, but Gael's hand instinctively shot into his own sleeve as well, withdrawing the thin kitchen knife he'd kept hidden.

His knife snapped out like a breath, and in the same instant, it found the Doctor's neck.

The two of them froze—locked together in silence. Knife to scalpel. Life and death balanced on a razor-thin wire.

Gael stared into the Doctor's shadow-shrouded eyes, his jaw clenched.

This was insane.

He should just kill the Doctor. He reckoned he could take the Daughter down easily too. Then, he should gut the lab, steal all of the important-looking elixirs, and find a way to slip back into Bharncair where he could vanish like smoke through the fog.

His grip tightened.

But…

His eyes drifted sideways. The Daughter hadn't moved.

She was still watching calmly, quietly, like she wasn't watching her foster brother and father about to kill each other.

Gael's hand trembled.

'Why?', he wondered.

Why couldn't he do it?

He could see the artery. The depth. The angle. One twitch. That's all it would take to kill the Doctor.

But his wrist didn't move.

It couldn't move.

So eventually, the Doctor leaned back and smiled with the same maddening calm the Daughter had. "See?"

…

Gael pulled his knife away slowly, breathing through his teeth.

"You're cursed now," the Doctor continued. "If you keep the mandate in your heart, you'll never be able to break it. You'll never be able to kill again without good reason. Not without love."

Gael's head snapped up. "What?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Men say the only thing strong enough to undo the mandate is love. Real, obsessive, heart-bleeding love. The kind that makes murder feel like mercy." Then he looked Gael up and down with a grin. "But men also say love is a two-way street, and someone loving you aside, I doubt you'll fall for anyone anytime soon, hm? In that case, I've just sworn you off from killing anyone ever again."

The Doctor turned back to the bench, calmly adjusting the flame under the elixir. The Daughter quickly moved to help him with the work, increasing the strength of the flame with a valve on the side of the bench.

Gael stood there for a long moment before asking, quieter this time, "Can I… really be a proper doctor?"

The Doctor didn't hesitate. "Of course. If even I can, then why can't you?"

Gael said nothing.

His chest ached a little, and he didn't know why.

Suddenly, the Daughter stepped forward, holding out a tissue. Just a small one. Folded. Clean.

"... Nice to meet you, by the way." she said. "I'm Cara Halloway."

He stared at her hand, and for a second, thought about walking away.

But his fingers moved first.

He took the tissue.

"...Gael," he said hoarsely. "Halloway."

Their hands met briefly, but it was enough.

From across the lab, the Doctor laughed and turned back to the elixir, flame dancing under the glass.

"Good. That's good," he said, voice warm now. "You'll be good siblings working on the symbiote elixir now, the two of you. Just remember, Gael: just as Cara's going to take care of you, you've got to take care of her, too."

He smiled wider.

"That's what family's all about, right?"

Her glimpse of the past dissolved like frost on steel.

Maeve drew in a harsh breath. Her eyes snapped open, her lungs trembling as if she just surfaced from water. The cold of the central control chamber rushed back into her bones. The screams. The trembling bridges. The heat of bioarcanic lanterns warping in the draft. All of it was real again.

And beside her, so was Gael.

He hadn't moved. He was still crouched at the edge of the gate, staring wide-eyed down at the abyss where Cara had vanished. It was like something vital had come undone inside him. It was like he'd forgotten how to move.

Behind them, Lorcawn's voice cut through the chamber like a blade through linen.

"Doctor. Open the pipes. As I said, let us worry about the monstrosities."

Maeve turned her head slightly.

The Palm was still standing exactly as before. None of this shook him. Not the screams. Not the chaos. Not the girl who'd just fallen.

He barely registered Cara.

So when she turned back to Gael, something flickered in her throat—anger or panic, she wasn't sure—and before she could think better of it, she reached forward and seized his wrist.

Then she tipped forward, throwing herself off the edge, and dragged Gael down with her.

The wind tore upward.

But then their ankle chain snapped tight, stopping them from falling all the way.

Someone seized Gael's other ankle mid-fall, yanking him hard enough that both of them were jerked to an immediate halt. Maeve's body swung downward. Gael dangled above her, suspended between the abyss and the ledge.

Above them, Lorcawn crouched at the ledge, holding their chain like a leash.

"You still have a contract with me, Doctor," he said, voice perfectly composed. "You wield the key, and you are to open the valves for the Repossessors. That was our agreement."

The chain creaked slightly. He was steadying it. Not reeling them up. Just… holding.

Maeve grit her teeth.

She looked up at Gael again. His eyes, though hidden behind his lenses, were still locked on the space beneath them—still staring down where Cara had fallen, as if his mind hadn't left that second.

"Doctor!" she shouted, this time loud enough to shake dust from the metal around them. "That's your sister, isn't she? What the hell are you even stunned for, huh?"

Her voice cracked against the walls, and something inside her chest thrashed harder than her heartbeat.

"You're her brother!" she yelled. "Go get her!"

She didn't know if it reached him. She didn't know what he was feeling.

But slowly—slowly—his head turned.

The chain on his ankle rattled as his posture shifted.

And then his grin spread like a rip in a stitched wound.

Without a word, he flocked his gloved hand up, and his hungry flower uncoiled, petals peeling open to reveal serrated mouths that lunged for Lorcawn's hand. One snap. The Palm had no choice but to flinch away, dropping the chain in his hand, and in turn, the world dropped out from under the two of them.

Maeve's breath tore loose as the two of them plummeted together into the dark. Wind howled past her ears, snatching at her dress and hair as metal and rustlight blurred above.

"Evelyn!" Gael shouted into the roaring air. "Grab Liorin, get the Ladybug, and tell her 'ten percent'! Now!"

At the same time, time seemed to flow slower as Maeve locked eyes with Fergal, who was kneeling by the edge of the control chamber right next to Lorcawn.

His eyes followed them down, and his face was unreadable at first. Stern. Set. He had a clenched jaw beneath the slicked hair, but something flickered behind his usual mask of control.

So she shaped the words slowly with her lips, letting them carry in silence:

You like her, don't you?

Fergal froze.

Then time snapped back, and Maeve and Gael continued plummeting after Cara.

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